No company is safe if the AI bubble pops

Google CEO Sundar Pichai says that if the AI bubble bursts, nobody gets out untouched, including Google. Speaking to the BBC, he described today’s AI boom as an extraordinary moment but noted clear signs of irrational hype that feel similar to the dot-com era.

Alphabet’s stock is up more than 45 percent this year as investors bet it can keep up with OpenAI. At the same time, analysts in the US and UK warn that valuations look stretched and could trigger broader market pressure if sentiment shifts.

Pichai said Google could handle a downturn but agreed that no company is truly insulated. He also acknowledged that AI’s rising energy demands will delay Alphabet’s net-zero commitments as the company builds out more computing power.

Google recently pledged £5 billion to UK AI research and infrastructure and plans to train models in Britain, a move that Prime Minister Keir Starmer hopes will help the UK become the third major AI power behind the US and China.

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Databricks co-founder Andy Konwinski says the US is losing ground to China in AI research, and he calls the trend an existential threat. Speaking at the Cerebral Valley AI Summit, he said PhD students at top US universities are now seeing more breakthrough ideas coming out of Chinese labs than American ones.

Konwinski now runs the AI investment firm Laude and argues that true innovation depends on open research. He points to the original Transformer paper as proof that the best ideas often come from open, freely shared work. By contrast, he says US labs like OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic keep most of their advances closed while hiring away top academics with enormous salaries.

He also says China encourages open sourcing across major labs such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen, which speeds up discovery. In his view, the US has lost the culture of open exchange that made it a global leader. His message is simple: staying ahead requires staying open.

As more people ask ChatGPT instead of Google for recommendations, Peec AI has become one of Europe’s fastest rising startups. The Berlin company just raised a $21 million Series A led by Singular, only four months after its Seed round. The valuation has tripled to above $100 million.

Peec AI helps brands understand how they appear in AI search results, track sentiment, and see which sources shape AI answers. This new field, known as Generative Engine Optimization, is quickly becoming the AI version of SEO. The company has already reached more than $4 million in annual recurring revenue and works with over 1,300 businesses.

The new funding will support hiring forty people and opening a New York office next year. Peec AI adds around 300 customers each month as brands try to secure visibility in AI answers. Pricing starts at €75 per month for tracking up to 25 prompts.

Its biggest advantage is its data pipeline, built from large pools of real AI queries. Current customers include Axel Springer, Chanel, ElevenLabs, n8n and TUI.

AI is creeping into every part of modern relationships, from matching to marriage to messy breakups.

Tinder is testing a feature called Chemistry that scans your camera roll and asks interactive questions to better understand your personality. It is a move away from endless compatibility quizzes and toward a more automated approach.

Beyond dating, AI has become a regular part of wedding planning. The Knot says more than a third of couples use AI tools to plan their ceremony. Divorce lawyers also say clients often use ChatGPT to simplify paperwork, interpret legal language or process the emotional fallout.

The dating market is worth about ten billion dollars a year, and the US wedding market hits around one hundred billion, so it is no surprise that AI companions are becoming popular too. Some users build relationships directly with AI partners that feel supportive, funny and emotionally aware.

Still, there are real risks. Some couples say dependence on AI pushed them apart, and many people consider emotional attachment to a bot a form of cheating. There are also privacy concerns as companies look for ways to monetize deeply personal data.

AI can help with logistics and communication, but the emotional work of a relationship still needs to come from humans. Templates and planning tools are fine, but the connection has to be real.